South Africa is approaching 100 consecutive days of continuous blackouts, the longest stretch yet, with more to come as its power crisis deepens.
Eskom has imposed daily blackouts since October 31, making Monday the 99th consecutive day of blackouts, according to Bloomberg calculations.
Load shedding is needed to protect the national grid from collapse when Eskom’s old, poorly maintained and mostly coal-fired plants cannot meet demand, which happened in 200 days during 2022.
Blackouts have plagued the country for some 15 years and are likely to continue for at least two more as Eskom overhauls its power generation fleet. It is trying to raise its power availability factor, a measure of how much capacity can be used, to 70% by March 2025 from about half now, and it needs an additional 4,000 to 6,000 megawatts of generating capacity to finish with the blackouts.
The Reserve Bank of South Africa lowered its economic growth forecast for this year to 0.3%, from 1.1% previously, and Governor Lesetja Kganyago said power outages will cut growth by 2 percentage points. output in 2023. Economists in a Bloomberg survey see a 45% chance the nation will enter a recession this year.
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